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Staying Home is the New Journey

I was walking through O’Hare airport and saw an old girlfriend I hadn’t seen in years. Dori was a very close friend of mine all through grade school, high school, and for a few semesters in college.  I thought about her often.  I hate it when friendships run their course, it makes me sad. I stopped at the gate where Dori was waiting for her flight, and we tried to catch up. It’s hard when you know you’ve got five minutes to cover thirty years.  So we said a little bit about nothing. The best we could do was exchange statistics about children, parents, siblings and friends we had in common. When we were saying our good-byes, Dori said to me, “Life is a journey.”

Why did she leave me with that tired cliché? Now it’s indelibly stuck in my memory associated with her.  Whenever I hear somebody say, “Life is a journey,” Dori pops up in my mind and I relive that awkward airport meeting all over again.

Journey is a popular word to use for programs, books, and blogs. There’s a very nice website called The Soul Journey. You can take their program, learn more about yourself, and discover your soul purpose. A popular new book by Gary Zukav, Spiritual Partnership: The Journey to Authentic Power is heading up the best-seller charts. The J-word sprang up for me recently, when I took part in a panel discussion about my “spiritual journey.”  In the same way I don’t see my life as a journey, I don’t see my spirituality as a journey either.  After the three panelists told our stories, a man in the audience asked the question, “What’s next?”  There’s an assumption that there always needs to be a next. Whatever happened to: “How’s now going for you?” If we’re always going to the next stop along the way, how do we fully appreciate where we are?

I’m at my destination. I’m happy with my life and my spirituality. Sure, I have plans to do more and be better, but those plans do not define me. Invite contentment to settle in. If clichés must be resurrected, let them be: “Stop and smell the roses,”  “Be grateful for what you have,” or, “Play the hand you’re dealt with.”  Ambition has its time and place. I’m not suggesting that we all turn into unmotivated slugs. I am suggesting that life, like spirituality, can be home sweet home.

Let me ask an unusual thing:
Bless the people
with their cranky pants on this morning.
The ones who got off
on the wrong foot today.
Who woke up
on the wrong side of the bed.
Show them that each moment
spawns another choice.
That there is no great abacus in the sky
meting out glitches.
Nudge them toward knowing you can always,
hitch up the sail and turn the ship's wheel,
and set course for the serene blue horizon.
Help me too, to keep in mind
it's their bad day, not mine.
Steer me toward my own crystal morn.

-Ruth Williams

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